1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of producing an L-amino acid using a bacterium, and more particularly, to a method of producing an L-amino acid such as L-lysine, L-threonine, and L-glutamic acid. L-lysine and L-threonine are useful as additives in animal feeds, health food, amino acid infusions, and the like. L-glutamic acid is useful as a food seasoning.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
L-amino acids have been industrially produced by fermentation using bacteria belonging to the genera Brevibacterium, Corynebacterium, Escherichia, or the like. Methods of producing L-lysine are described in EP 0643135 B, EP 0733712 B, EP 1477565 A, EP 0796912 A, EP 0837134 A, WO 01/53459, EP 1170376 A, and WO 2005/010175. In these methods, bacterial strains are used which are isolated from nature or artificial mutants thereof, as well as bacterial strains which have been modified to enhance the activity of an L-amino acid biosynthetic enzyme by recombinant DNA techniques.
Acetyl-CoA synthetase catalyzes a reaction to produce acetyl-CoA, pyrophosphate and AMP from acetic acid, coenzyme A and ATP, and is encoded by an acs gene (J Bacteriol. 1995 May; 177(10):2878-86.). However, there have been no reports that enhancing the activity of acetyl-CoA synthetase can be effective for L-amino acid production.